Demonstration and Evaluation of the Heed the Speed Pedestrian Safety Program
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DOT HS 811 515 July 2012 Demonstration and Evaluation of the Heed the Speed Pedestrian Safety Program Final Report DISCLAIMER This publication is distributed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in the interest of information exchange. The opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Department of Transportation or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The United States Government assumes no liability for its contents or use thereof. If trade names, manufacturers’ names, or specific products are mentioned, it is because they are considered essential to the object of the publication and should not be construed as an endorsement. The United States Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Suggested APA Citation: Blomberg, R. D., Thomas III, F. D., & Marziani, B. J. (2012, July). Demonstration and Evaluation of the Heed the Speed Pedestrian Safety Program (Report No. DOT HS 811 515). Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Technical Report Documentation Page 1. Report No. 2. Government Accession No. 3. Recipient’s Catalog No. DOT HS 811 515 4. Title and Subject 5. Report Date July 2012 Demonstration and Evaluation of the Heed the Speed Pedestrian Safety Program 6. Performing Organization Code 216 7. Authors 8. Performing Organization Report No. Richard D. Blomberg, F. Dennis Thomas, III, and Bruce J. Marziani 216-1 9. Performing Organization Name and Address 10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS) Dunlap and Associates, Inc. 110 Lenox Avenue 11. Contract or Grant No. Stamford, CT 06906 DTNH22-05-C-05088 12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address 13. Type of Report and Period Covered Final Report National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 9/16/05-9/15/10 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE. 14. Sponsoring Agency Code Washington, DC 20590 15. Supplementary Notes Marvin M. Levy, Ph.D., Jenny Ellis, Ph.D., Eunyoung Lim, MPH, and Jessica Cicchino, Ph.D., were the NHTSA Contracting Officer’s Technical Representatives. 16. Abstract This study built upon the work of Blomberg and Cleven (2006) in Arizona, where they developed and pilot-tested the concept of Heed the Speed, a neighborhood-based combination of enforcement, education, and modest engineering designed to reduce vehicle speeds to benefit pedestrian safety. The current program was expanded and applied to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to determine if reducing speeds in neighborhoods would lead to a reduction in pedestrian-involved crashes. The study attempted to increase speed enforcement by the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) in six police districts by purchasing 24 Speed Tracker units that were installed and calibrated in four police cars in each of the six police districts. Since Pennsylvania law prohibits the use of radar by local police, the availability of the Speed Tracker timing devices provided the PPD with additional capability to document speed violations. It was hoped that publicizing this capability would deter speeding in the test districts. The Philadelphia Streets Department focused its efforts on engineering countermeasures in the six target police districts. Street Smarts, the city’s safety education contractor, distributed pedestrian safety information throughout the city; however, community involvement in the targeted districts was limited. The evaluation of the program showed speed reductions at 17 of 24 measurement locations. However, no crash reductions were observed in the six districts relative to the remainder of the city. Also, an awareness survey showed little penetration of the safety messages or awareness of increased speeding enforcement by the police. This is not surprising given the lack of paid media, the sparse enforcement that was actually mounted in the test districts, and the assessment of awareness at licensing centers outside the test districts. Overall, the results indicate that a direct scale-up of Heed the Speed as used in targeted Arizona neighborhoods to a city the size of Philadelphia is likely not realistic given the resources required. The study also suggested that the inability to use radar as an enforcement tool was not totally overcome by the use of quantitative speed timing devices. Either the techniques should remain as originally developed and only be applied on a road-segment-by-road-segment basis, or the Heed the Speed toolkit should be expanded to address the unique situations and constraints of large, congested cities where speeding is not an enforcement priority. 17. Key Words 18. Distribution Statement Pedestrian safety Field test Document is available to the public from the National Technical Speeding Enforcement Information Service www.ntis.gov 19. Security Classif. (of this report) 20. Security Classif. (of this page) 21. No. of Pages 22. Price Unclassified Unclassified 94 Form DOT F 1700.7 (8-72) i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are grateful for invaluable input from the following people and organizations: Philadelphia Streets Department • Commissioner Clarena I. W. Tolson • Charles J. Denny, Acting Chief Traffic Engineer • Kasim Ali, Acting Assistant Chief Traffic Engineer • Dominic Henderson, Technician Philadelphia Police Department • Capt. Stephen Murianka, Grants Management • Sgt. Philip Devlin, Truck Enforcement Philadelphia Health Management Corporation • Donna M. Ferraro, Project Director, Street Smarts Pennsylvania Department of Transportation • David Bachman, Pedestrian/Bicycle Coordinator • Girish (Gary) N. Modi, Chief, Safety Management Division, Bureau of Highway Safety and Traffic Engineering • Chrystal Stephans, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Driver Licensing, SE Regional Manager NHTSA Regional Office Personnel • Lorraine Novak, Regional Program Manager Team Leader, Region 3 • Richard Simon, Deputy Regional Administrator, Region 2 ii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Introduction Speeding is one of the most prevalent factors contributing to traffic crashes (NHTSA, 2011). For over two decades, speeding has been involved in approximately one-third of all motor vehicle fatalities (NHTSA, 1995, 2000, 2011). In 2009, speeding was a contributing factor in 31% of all fatal crashes, and 10,591 lives were lost in speeding-related crashes (NHTSA, 2011). Relatively few references have provided a quantitative link between speed reduction and pedestrian safety benefits. Many researchers allude to the presumed benefits in terms of both injury reduction and crash avoidance, but there is a paucity of specific studies that confirm the link between crash incidence and speed. This is the final report of a study titled Demonstration and Evaluation of the Heed the Speed Pedestrian Safety Program conducted by Dunlap and Associates, Inc., under Contract Number DTNH22-05-C-05088 from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The study builds upon the work of Blomberg and Cleven (2006) in Arizona, where they developed and pilot-tested the concept of Heed the Speed, a neighborhood-based combination of enforcement, education, and modest engineering designed to reduce vehicle speeds to benefit pedestrian safety. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the adopted approach required four separate but coordinated steps. The first involved selecting a test jurisdiction (e.g., city, county) that was sufficiently large to support a crash-based evaluation of Heed the Speed. The second step was to work with the chosen city to determine where the Heed the Speed interventions would be applied. Step three involved countermeasure selection and development, and step four focused on implementation and evaluation. Program Activities An extensive site selection process culminated in the identification of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a potential site for the project. After an initial meeting in the fall of 2006, it was agreed that Philadelphia would serve as the test site. Approximately the first eight months after the decision to use Philadelphia as the test site were devoted to establishing a Heed the Speed working group, to conducting detailed analyses of the areas of the city that might be appropriate for Heed the Speed, and to documenting the conditions and resources in the city that were relevant to a successful implementation of the concept. Specific attention was paid to countermeasure application areas or “zones” in which to focus efforts and to the nature of the countermeasures themselves. The Philadelphia Streets Department had been planning a safe driving campaign that was mainly focused on speeding. This program was tentatively named “Drive CarePhilly.” The experience in Arizona was that the program name Heed the Speed was memorable and appeared to convey the essence of the behavioral objective of a residential neighborhood speed campaign. After considerable discussion, the working group decided to combine the two into a single program name: Drive CarePhilly–Heed the Speed. The logo from Arizona was adapted to produce a logo for the campaign that was unveiled at an opening press event for the program on June 13, 2008 (Figure ES-1). iii Figure ES-1. Campaign Logo as Shown at the Opening Press Event The Streets Department focused its efforts on engineering countermeasures in six target police districts (see Figure ES-2) as well as elsewhere if speeding had been highlighted by a citizen complaint or if notice was received from another city agency such as the police. The engineering program consisted of: • Verifying that speed limit